Since we killed Empress on Wednesday I figured today would be a good time to provide those of you who haven’t gotten through it yet with some notes on the various encounters. This will be much like what I did for MSV (which people seemed to find helpful). Next week I’ll do Terroace of Endless Spring. Anyways onto the HoF!

Imperial Vizier Zor’Lok

The Rundown:

Trash: Trash consists of packs of big and little bugs. Many of the big bugs can be CC’ed and should be in order to make life easier. The little bugs will randomly fixate on people, so just make sure you stack to AoE them down. You must pull all of the trash in Vizier’s room itself. Make sure you pull the last pack back as Vizier will spawn immediately after it is dead and you can accidentally pull if you’re too close to the middle.

Talents: FS, Incarnation, NV.

Glyphs: SI, Stampeding Roar.

Gear: Consistent RPS (Hit/Exp > Crit > Haste).

Encounter Notes:

This is a 1 tank fight.

The boss will start at one of the three platforms randomly.

Save Stampeding Roar for when moving cross-platform.

He will melee for a decent amount, so make sure you keep up SD when he is attacking you.

Attenuation: Stay at max melee range. It will rotate randomly either clockwise or counterclockwise. You will know which way it’s going after you dodge the first 2 waves. There’s a wierd glitch where the wave behind you will hit you even if you’re not quite touching it, but the wave ahead of you will not. So when in doubt, stay closer to the wave in front of you. As long as you’re still in melee range you won’t have to worry about the bounces.

Mind Control: DO NOT USE THRASH.

Force and Verve: This used to be an absolute pain in the ass, and then they nerfed it to lolville. This is when you want to first use your NV + Incarnation though. You won’t really take much damage, but you can still help out your healers. Tranq if you want, but it’s not really worth it.

Exhale: This can be a huge pain in the ass if your melee are stupid and stack on top of the boss. Otherwise you need to identify which way to move and block the beam ASAP. Don’t be afraid to CD it if a healer is the one being stunned or MC’ed.

Blade Lord Ta’Yak

The Rundown:

Trash: Make sure you wait for each named elite to run to their alcove before pulling them. I learned this the hard way :(

Talents: FS/WC, Incarnation, NV or HoTW.

Glyphs: Stampeding Roar.

Gear: Consistent RPS (Hit/Exp > Crit > Haste).

Encounter Notes:

We had good success by simply pulling the boss to the middle of the room and then slowly moving him down one side.

Yell at your ranged / healers if they insist on standing behind you. The last thing you want is to have to worry about tornadoes when moving the boss.

It’s pretty difficult to predict the angle during Unseen Strike. Do your best to not get knocked into Tornadoes because that’ll pretty much fuck you.

Keep SD up when tanking. Dump extra Rage into FR/Maul as normal.

Ask your healers when to Tranq during P2.

I like to Stampeding Roar for the 1st Run since you can catch Tornadoes for the 2nd.

I burn Incarnation/NV after the first run to make sure people are topped off.

Nature’s Swiftness is pretty amazing on this fight.

Garalon

The Rundown:

Trash: LoL? We just pull the entire room at once for funzies. You probably don’t want to do that, but basically it’s pretty harmless.

Talents: FS, Incarnation, NV.

Glyphs: Maul, Survival Instincts, Stampeding Roar.

Gear: Consistent RPS (Hit/Exp > Crit > Haste).

Encounter Notes:

Figure out who is doing pheremones. We don’t have tanks doing them, but that doesn’t mean you can’t. I guess what I’m trying to say is I have no advice to offer for kiting pheremones.

On the pull make sure whoever is kiting pheremones is the closest person to Garalon. He doesn’t have a melee attack or aggro table so you don’t have to worry about them getting smushed.

Don’t bother with SD. You can dodge the cleave attack, but then you don’t gain any Vengeance (I don’t think). Since this boss has a pretty steep DPS check it’s important that you deal as much damage as possible. Heal with FR instead.

Use Berserk when attacking one of the front legs so it cleaves to the body.

You can keep the damage bonus on a front leg and soak the cleave. It takes some practice to maintain the positioning.

You basically have to be able to mouse-turn to soak the cleave properly. I have no idea how you would do it if you turn using the keyboard.

Save Stampeding Roar for when Garalon flips quickly.

Garalon gaining a stack of Fury isn’t the end of the world, but don’t make a habit of it.

In the unlikely event that you get Pheremones when you aren’t supposed to SPLIT FROM YOUR CO-TANK IMMEDIATELY until people figure out wtf to do.

Don’t get hit by Crush when standing in a puddle.

Wind Lord Mel’jarak

The Rundown:

Trash: None.

Talents: Incarnation, NV.

Glyphs: Maul.

Gear: Consistent RPS (Hit/Exp > Crit > Haste).

Encounter Notes:

This is can easily one-tanked on normal.

Spam teh SD all the time!.

Make sure Thrash has a 100% uptime. It does crazy damage.

Use Berserk once you have everything ontop of you to cleave the first group down as quickly as possible.

Don’t be afraid to move to pop someone out of amber if required.

Make sure you dodge the boomerang blade once all of the adds are dead.

Try and move him as close to the middle as possible once all the adds are dead to give the rest of your raid as much room as possible for wind bombs.

For the love of fucking god do not step in a wind bomb.

Rain of Blades can be dodged. Try and have SD up for it.

Enjoy being top DPS.

Amber-Shaper Un’sok

The Rundown:

Trash: The big guys will put a debuff on you, but meh. The slimes will constantly spawn until all 4 of the alcoves have been cleared.

Talents: FS, Incarnation, HotW/NV.

Glyphs: Maul.

Gear: Consistent RPS (Hit/Exp > Crit > Haste).

Encounter Notes:

We think the first target for Shape Life is random.

MAKE DAMN FUCKING SURE YOU ARE NOT IN BEAR FORM DURING SHAPE LIFE IN PHASE 1.

Abomination is pretty easy. Spam 1. Use 2 when exploding. You should never have to use 3 in P1. If you do, your DPS is fucking terrible or you were in Bear Form during Shape Life like a noob.

Amber Shaper himself hits like a panzy during P1. Dump Rage into Maul during this phase. Use Berserk when your co-tank gets transformed.

Phase 2 is pretty boring. Swap tanks on the abomination when one of you gets flung. You will want to use SD during this part as the abomination actually has a decent melee attack.

Definitely use NV/Incarnation as late as you can in P3. Work backwards from there for when you can use it otherwise.

Grand Empress Shek’zeer

The Rundown:

Trash: Meh? Just pull the packs one at a time and AoE them down. They will get a buff from standing near each other but it’s not that big a deal. Interrupt the wind guys..

Talents: FS, Typhoon, Incarnation, Ursol’s Vortex, NV.

Glyphs: Maul.

Gear: Consistent RPS (Hit/Exp > Crit > Haste).

Encounter Notes:

P1 is pretty boring. We found it easiest to tank the boss closer to the side that the last tank will have her on. This will be the tank that goes 2nd in the taunt rotation.

It’s pretty much a wipe if you get a swirly thing in melee during P1. If that happens yell at your ranged / healers.

You want to do as much damage as you can in P1 without burning cooldowns.

I really liked having NS to pick people up when they get low after an explosion.

Empress hits decently hard. Keep SD up when tanking, and FR after explosions.

P2 is a huge clusterfuck. Grab aggro on all of your adds, but try to do it as close to your co-tank as possible. They’re really hard to move afterwards. Once you have aggro immediately Typhoon/Vortex the wind guys away to give yourself some breathing/thinking room. Once they get back to you again blow Berserk and start chaining cooldowns (SI, MoU, BS, Incarnation, NV). Kill one of the wind guys ASAP. Keep SD up as much as possible and heal with FR if you get super low.

It’s pretty likely that you’ll need to trap both Reavers, so get the rest of your raid to make 2 traps so you can trap them and kill the last wind guy. Empress comes back when all the wind guys are dead

Don’t forget to run around and give the DPS the Poison Drenched Armor buff.

Work out with your healers when to Tranq in P3. Use NV/Incarnation again afterwards for further healer relief.

Some of these seem a lot more complicated than they are. As with all encounters they’re pretty easy with practice. Do you have anything to share?

2 Comments

For Goralon it’s worth noting that you should be able to survive mostly on your own (you can even use some dps gear and surely you can run with dps trinkets, embossments if you have profession for it). Make sure healers are aware about that and that they pick others as focus for their beacons, shields and HoTs. Simply plan your cd’s coverage so that they don’t overlap too much with Berserk and Incarnation being used when there is leg up. Make sure you have rage after every every Furious Swipe landing. Don’t use cd on Crush (silly damage for a tank), kiter swap is actually a breath catch for you to gather rage.